I remember in the late 1960s, when the famous Czech
conductor Karel Ancerl left Prague, I was confronted with a certain thought
that touched me deeply. Back then, I was a music student at University in
Bratislava. It was the first time that I realized that that conductor was a
survivor of the concentration camps in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. I could
hardly imagine that this outstanding artist, to whom sold-out concert halls
applauded worldwide, could have experienced such humiliation; that he could
have ever suffered such a fate. It was incomprehensible to me that, at that
time, he was one of many numbered prisoners – someone sentenced to death. In
actual fact, he had entered the most beautiful profession – he was a musician.
One could not possibly treat him like the others; I was convinced at that
time. There was hardly anybody with whom I could have shared these thoughts.
However, more than a quarter of a century had to pass before the history of
Czech and German music and the fate of Jewish musicians in the Third Reich has
become object of both my interest and research.

More than 450 years of music in Dresden have shaped the
history of European music; Dresden and its music have always been worth
researching. Consequently, it seems surprising that parts of the music’s past
– more then five decades of it – have been evaded and neglected. In contrast
to older editions, current encyclopaedia, no longer mention people who had
formed the musical life of Dresden until 1933. An example to be mentioned is
the essay “Dresden”, which is found in the first edition of the encyclopaedia
“Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart”. The authors claimed that musical
institutions “remained intact inwardly” and were “after the destruction of
1945, soon brought back to life”. Despite casual reference to the Dresden
scene back then, until the late 1990s of the 20th century, there
had existed no specialized publishing related to the Nazi-persecution of
musicians in Dresden and relating to the music life of the Jewish people in
Dresden from the year 1933 until 1945.

With regards to the proportion of Jewish musicians which
had participated in Dresden’s musical activities, the “Gemeindeblatt der
Israelitischen Religionsgemeinde” (Journal of the Israeli’s religious
community, in the following referred to as “journal”) serves as essential
contemporary witness. This “journal”, which was first published in 1925, was
not only a source of internal information for community members, but also
conveyed particular details of the music. Within the parish, there existed in
addition to the synagogue’s choir, the Jewish Youth Orchestra Dresden. Among
the outstanding personalities of the community, the following are to be named:
Rafael Hofstein and Leo Fantel, connoisseur of synagogue music. The “journal”
provides reference to selected musical events in the city. Among those
referenced are both concerts of the Synagogue’s choir and non-Jewish,
internationally renown interpreters. Yet, those events mentioned in the
journal, are certainly only a fraction of the city’s rich musical history.

In the early Twenties and early Thirties, Dresden had
welcomed a number of internationally respected interpreters – often integrated
in grand music events. Until 1933 Dresden was connected with such musical
phenomena as Leo Blech, Carl Flesch, Hans Gál, Berthold Goldschmidt, Jascha
Heifetz, Rudolph and Paul Hindemith, Bronisław Huberman, Paul Kletzki, Darius
Milhaud, Oskar Nedbal, Gregor Piatgorski, Karol Rathaus, Alma Rosé, Artur
Schnabel, Arnold Schönberg, Erwin Schulhoff, Franz Schreker, Alexandre
Tansman, Richard Tauber, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ernst Toch and Kurt Weill
– just to name a few of those who would later be ostracized. They enriched
Dresden’s musical tradition and contributed to its fame, partly personally or
with their premieres. In connection with the concert cycle of “Neue Musik Paul
Aron” (”New Music Paul Aron”), which represent a unique experience within the
European context, between 1920 and 1931, the performances of composers from
the “Zweite Wiener Schule” (”Second Vienna School”), “Groupe des Six” and many
more composers– took place. Unfortunately, the Dresden era of conductors Fritz
Reiner and Issay Dobrowen were put to an end respectively in 1922 and 1924.
They left the city due to anti-Semitic public opinion. Moreover, the two
musicians Arthur Chitz, and Richard Engländer were both having an effect on
Dresden; they both held PhDs in music history, and the latter can be traced
back the early 20ies. Violinist Francis Koene – since 1926 first concertmaster
of the Sächsische Staatskapelle – belonged to the most treasured chamber
musicians of the city. Virtuoso violinist Szymon Goldberg and Stefan Frenkel
were his contemporaries and had been sitting right next to the conductor’s
desk of the Dresdner Philharmonie. In addition to all of this, there was also
a well-established soloist ensemble performing out of the Dresden opera house.
Fritz Busch hired for example the young singer Maria Elsner, who immediately
caused a sensation. All the people mentioned, contributed to and thrived
within the musical atmosphere enjoyed the atmosphere that both demanded
creativity and demanded innovation.

However, with the beginning of the 30ies, the new political
agenda loomed before Dresden’s flourishing musical life. After a concert,
which was organized by the “Richard-Wagner-Verband deutscher Frauen” (”Young
women’s union Richard Wagner”), on September 25, 1930, the official daily
paper of the Nazi party NSDAP area Saxony – “Der Freiheitskampf” – criticized
that the Jewish department store Alsberg had been chosen as venue and that
“the Jew Goldstein” had been engaged as accompanier. Related to Paul
Hindemith’s planned performance “Santa Susanna” on November 9, 1930, the
Dresden German Nationalists introduced a request to parliament which was aimed
to attack Hindemith and the leading Jewish pianist Paul Aron. Three weeks
later, the very same paper openly attacked the “Jewish concert entrepreneur
Aron”. It took roughly two years, before these pitched attacks became the
legitimate national policy. The seemingly ideal world among Dresden’s
musicians who could not prove their Aryan heritage was about to break apart.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Jewish musicians fell from favour and
were about to be persecuted. In the evening of March 1933, SA troops occupied
the opera house and the play theatre. Shortly thereafter, conductor Fritz
Busch, Alfred Reuter, who was general manager of the theatre, and many others
were divested of their offices. Except for five singers, all the boards of
directors and the soloist ensemble agreed to the relief of Alfred Reuter and
Fritz Busch in writting. On April 7, 1933, one month after Busch had been
banished from the conductor’s desk, all the musicians of Jewish descent living
in Germany experienced a unprecedented situation. By law governing the
reestablishment of officialdom and the included Aryans’ article (”Gesezt zur
Wiederherstellung des Beamtentums” with the “Arierparagraph”), all the
functionaries of non-Aryan descent had to retire. Among those regarded as
non-Aryan, were everyone who descended from non-Aryan, particularly Jewish
parents, or grand-parents. Henceforth, the requisites for this profession were
no longer based on skill but on ancestry. Over night, almost all employed
musicians, educators of music and music journalists became unemployed.
Moreover, the new law served as a tool to remove undesired appointees, above
all members or sympathisers of the Social-Democrats’ Party, Social Workers
Party, and the Communist Party Germany. Paul Büttner, composer and art
director of the conservatory, was released from his office as a
Social-Democrat without previous notice, in May 1933. His wife Eva Büttner, an
art critic, was hit even twice: she was a Jew and a Social-Democratic assembly
woman of the Saxon Parliament.

A fraction of Dresden’s Jewish population made the decision
to go into exile. This choice – despite its consequences concerning both
social life and the psyche – proved to be life-saving. One of the most
prominent emigrants was Paul Aron, who was no longer allowed to fulfil his
task as teacher for music majors at the “Orchesterschule der Sächsischen
Staatskapelle”. It followed singers of the national opera Margit Bokor, Maria
Elsner, Peter Pieroti; repetitors of the national opera Josef Golstein and
Robert Kinsky; as well as musicians of the “Dresdner Philaharmonie” Mischa
Rakier and Salomon Engelsman; similarly other musicians of Jewish ancestry or
opponents of the new policy were at risk. Musical Director Arthur Chitz was
one of the few dissmissed officially not until 1934 from the Dresden municipal
theater. In 1935 Richard Engländer was fired from the “Orchesterschule der
Sächsischen Staatskapelle”.

The majority of the 5000 Jews who had lived in Dresden in
1933, stayed in Germany. Many of them did not leave Dresden – perhaps hoping
that the situation would not deteriorate any further. Consequently, musicians
and other artists after a first state of shock had to find their own way to
get through the situation. There was only one institution which could serve as
a basis for help: the Israelis’ Religious Community in Dresden. Besides a
number of task and problems, it had developed a form of an artists’ agency –
an agency tasked with the placement of unemployed Jewish musicians and actors,
which organized events for a partially equally unemployed Jewish audience. In
the summer 1933, the Jewish religious Association prepared the foundation of
an organization, such as one pre-existing by authority of the Prussian
government in Berlin, namely “Kulturbund Deutscher Juden” (Cultural
Assaociation of German Jews); renamed April 26, 1935 “Jüdischer Kulturbund
Berlin e.V”; (Jewish Cultural Association Berlin). While they strove to
establish a similar local institution, the artists in Dresden contributed the
department “Jewish Help for Artists’ under the cover of the Jewish help
committee. Since July 2 1933, they arranged numerous art events at various
venues in Dresden. On October 30, 1935 the opening of the Jewish Cultural
Association took place at the Synagogue. This association continued the
activities of the Jewish artists’ agency. Consequently, a variety of musical
events began to develop. They all had to be carried out under the supervision
and observation of the Nazis. As a result, a series of events evolved – only
Jews were allowed to feature and only Jews were allowed to appear in the
audience. For each event one had to file an application containing all details
to national officer Hans Hinkel, Prussian Ministry of Science, Art, and
national education. Only with a permit granted, could the events be carried
out.

From 1933 to 1938 these mostly musical events, had not only
featured the professional musicians of Dresden, as singer Herta Mautner-Falk,
Bella Erdoes-Herzfeld, Sabine Jurmann and Irma Infeld, pianoplayer Margarete
Anschel-Hofstein and Leonhard Prinz; or the unemployed musicians Walter
Goldmann, Alfred Wittenberg and Paul Blumfeld. The last three founded a piano
trio. In Dresden an ensemble arose out of necessity: a company of Jewish choir
and instrumentalists (”Jüdische Chor- und Instrumentalgemeinschaft“)
that gave many concerts. Head of the group were Walter Goldmann and Siegfried
Sonnenschein. However, the reestablishment the Jewish Youth Orchestra could
not be realized in 1933. Instead, many highly talented musicians who still
lived in Dresden were involved in events to which belonged violinist Heinz
Meyer (after 1945 Henry W. Meyer), pianist Fritz Meyer, violinist Rosa Satsch
as well as saxophonist and accordionist Rolf Neuding. Moreover, amateur
singers such as Rosi Elb and violinists Walter Grün and Harry Meyer, who all
lived in Dresden, also participated in the program. Still, the needs of the
Jewish audience could not be met due to the small number of musicians who had
stayed. As a result, numerous foreign, often internationally popular soloists
and artists who were members of other Jewish cultural associations in Germany
appeared in Dresden. Among them were singers Paula Salomon-Lindberg, Fritzi
Jokl, Alexander Kipnis and Max Kuttner, the duo with violinist Boris Schwarz
and pianist Joseph Schwarz, as well as cello player Stefan Auber, who had once
worked in Dresden. In the meantime, many contributors came to Dresden from
international tours such as the young musicians Tanja Ury-Zunser and Miriam
Zunser, or exiles like Paul Aron and Szymon Goldberg. Compared to Berlin,
Hamburg, Cologne or Frankfurt-Main, Dresden was a small community and
therefore could not finance a larger opera, theatre, or instrumental
ensembles. This insufficiency was compensated by newly formed musical and
theatrical ensembles from Berlin, Hamburg and Leipzig. That way, the Orchestra
of the Cultural Association of Jews in Germany (later named Orchestra of
Jewish Cultural Communities) visited Dresden and appeared on stage twice, the
conductors were Josef Rosenstock and Julius Prüwer. Furthermore, the Berlin
Opera Ensemble Dr. Willi Aron and the Winawer Choir with 40 singers, which was
founded in Berlin, gave guest performances in Dresden. Additionally, Dresden
also experienced various humorous, literary, and educational events. Music
played an equally important role in other social events of the community or in
events for children.

Initially, in the “Jewish Help for Artists” concerts,
opuses of typical composers were performed. However, once Jewish musicians
were no longer considered Germans and as they were no longer allowed to play
German composers’ music due to the Nuremburg Laws of September 15, 1935, the
programmes had to be rearranged. Naturally, the music of Jewish composers was
increasingly staged – even if the composers were of German nationality. Thus,
Dresden was often exposed to the music of the following composers: Hugo
Leichentritt, Arno Nadel, Karl Meth, Herbert Fromm, Max Kowalski, Julius
Weinberg, Walter Leigh, Salomone Rossi, Gustav Mahler, Ernst Toch and Issay
Dobrowen. In 1937, when the community organized a children’s afternoon by
staging a performance by children, Joseph Hayden’s “Children Symphony” and the
game for children “We build a city” by Paul Hindemith were to hear. 12-year
old Fritz Meyer played the piano part. As 1937’s seasons highlight was
considered Dresden’s world premier of the biblical scene “Balak and Bilam” of
cantor Hugo Adler from the German city Mannheim. For this performance, the
association arranged also a choir of amateurs. Meanwhile, it was again
necessary to adapt the arranged programmes to the fact that many originally
announced artists, because they had suddenly left Germany. For this reason,
the advertised evening with violinist Stefan Frenkel, who had worked in
Dresden, did not take place in 1935. Due to immigration, the community of
musicians in Dresden became more and more limited. So, the association had to
be creative and inventive. As a result, adaptation to special situations had
to be realized. In order to prove that they could stand their ground, they
left no stone unturned. Nevertheless, the two very passionate musicians Arthur
Chitz and Richard Engländer were not found to be contributors to the program
of the Cultural Association. Although both of them still lived in Dresden
after they were fired from respective institutions, they were not only
precluded from public musical life but also from the already alienated musical
life of Jews in Dresden. Despite their protestant belief, their Jewish
ancestry served as grounds to treat them as all the other Jews but was still
not enough to allow them to participate in Jewish cultural life.

Obviously, the Jews’ musical and cultural life in Dresden
became ghettoized and so revealed appalling abnormalities. While Dresden
staged two celebrated world premiers of the Richard Strauss’ operas “Arabella”
on July 1, 1933 and “Daphne” on October 15, 1933, more than 70 other events of
the Jewish Aid for Artists and the Jewish Cultural Association took place
between July 2 and October 19, 1933. They were all almost unnoticed. This
Jewish musical life, which was independent and established from necessity, was
excluded and concealed from the public; for this was never mentioned in the
official specialized or daily press. Only the still tolerated Jewish press -
all the Journal of the Israeli’s religious community – published countless
articles concerning these performances penned by reporter Eva Büttner from
Dresden. Her contributions reported meaningfully on musicians who still lived
in Dresden or those who - again - gave guest performances and were on concert.
These events were incomparable in form and content perhaps even due to the
circumstances. Furthermore, her articles are often the last clues to
performances of Jewish artists on German territory before they either went
into exile or perished and, eventually, were forgotten. Between first and last
performance, the Jewish musicians in Dresden had to suffer cruelty and had to
deal with broad interdictions and regulations. Little by little, the daily
inevitable and essential procedures were first exacerbated psychologically and
then de facto made impossible. During the the so called “Kristallnacht” – the
night from November 9-10 1938 – the Synagoge in Dresden built by Gottfried
Semper was set on fire and destroyed, moreover, Jewish shops, offices, and
medical practices were damaged and pillaged. The Jewish press was entirely
prohibited. Consequently, music was understandably out of place for Jewish
population. Almost all people involved in the musical activities of the Jewish
Association fled to other countries.

Even if those performances of the Jewish Cultural
Association, which were excluded from public, and those escapees from Dresden
would have remained, the mentioned circumstances prove that the regime of the
national socialists had decimated the once thriving musical life of Dresden.
Further incidents and tragic fates of those musicians who had once worked in
Dresden provide scene of destruction or rather of the apocalypse.

Among those musicians who were born in Dresden or had been
working there and those artists who performed in Dresden between 1933 and
1938, 21 died in concentration camps:

Dr. Willi Aron, born in 1889 in Berlin was opera director, historian in
the field of music, and pianist; he was deported to Auschwitz; his status
and place are unknown;

Otto Bernstein (born in 1887 in Posen) and his wife Jenny
Schaffer-Bernstein (born in 1888) who were both actors and participated in
the events of Jewish Cultural Association, were deported to Auschwitz in
1943 and killed;

Paul Blumenfeld,
Cellist, born in 1901, was declared dead in Sobibor;

Dr. Arthur Chitz, born 1882 in Prague, was musical director of the play
theatre in Dresden, pianist, composer and music-historian; he was deported
to the ghetto in Riga, were he perished in 1944;

Bernhard Chrzelitzer,
Singer, born 1902, was deported to Auschwitz, his
status and place are unknown;

Resi Elb,
Singer, born 1888 in Hamburg, and music critic Dr. Richard Elb,
born 1881 in Dresden, never returned after their deportation to Riga.

Dr. Leo
Fantel, Former feature writer and connoisseur of synagogue’s music, born 1885 in Prague, was initially deported to Theresienstadt, and
finally murdered in Auschwitz, on the March 8, 1944;

Hugo Koretz, Music-entertainer born in 1880 in Falkenau, was deported to
Auschwitz, and never came back;

Franz Landsberger, Art-historian born in 1880, is considered missing in
Reval/Tallinn;

Ernst Lee, Music-entertainer born in 1897 in Dresden, was deported to
Auschwitz, and is considered missing in Riga.

Martin Levin, Conductor and composer born in 1885 in Dresden, is
considered missing in Litzmannstadt;

Fritz Meyer, Young pianist born in 1925 in Dresden, died in 1943 in
Auschwitz; his father Harry Meyer, who was born 1891 in Beuthen, former
director of the Jewish youth orchestra Dresden, perished in 1945 in Dachau;

Josephine Musselek,
Singer, born in 1873 in Königsstein, a town near
Dresden, was also a victim of this racial delusion; she died on the October
11, 1942 in Theresienstadt;

Willy Rosen, born in 1899 in Magdeburg, was composer of operetta and pop
songs; he was deported to Auschwitz, on the September 29, 1944; his status
and place are unknown;

Walter Sachs,
Music-entertainer, born 1888 in Dresden, is considered
missing in Litzmannstadt;

Haydee Schmidt,
Harpist, was deported to Auschwitz, in 1942 where she
perished in 1943;

Erwin Schulhoff, born 1894 in Prague, was composer and pianist and had
worked in Dresden for over one year, died on the August 18, 1942 in an
detention-camp in the Bavarian city of Wülzburg.

Four out of those artists who worked in Dresden before
1933, rank among those who survived the concentration camps: violinist Heinz
Meyer had overcome several concentration camps, lastly the external camp
Ohrdruf, Germany near Buchenwald; music teacher and violin player Toni
Weigmann, music teacher Salka Falk and actor Siegfried Lewinsky returned from
Theresienstadt to Dresden.

In a hideout, two averted deportation: Eva Büttner, the
reporter of events of the Jewish Cultural Association Dresden and composer
Karl Freiherr von Kaskel. Being a semi-Jew, music teacher Maja Gotthelf
survived in Dresden.

Dozens of musicians went into exile. First some went to
European countries; then, after some time or directly even they went to
Palestine, China, the USA and other countries on the American continent.

With this publication - the “Dresden-list” – I have
attempted to reconstruct and document the missing history of the music and
individual fates by word and in vision. The silence lasted way too long to
present the full picture of persecution of the musical community in Dresden.
Even this contribution constitutes only a laboriously compiled fraction.

Ladies and gentlemen, maybe you concede that such a paper,
a paper with such content, should have never come into existence. Moreover, I
do not want to keep it secret that for me working on that topic, it was not
always easy to isolate shaking biographic facts from my emotions.

When, in 1995, I first started to take an interest in this episode of
Dresden's musical history, there were no publications dealing with the topic.
It was necessary first of all to assess the Nazi literature of the period.
That initial research provided me with the names of some one hundred composers,
musicians, musical theorists and journalist of Jewish origin, who had some
connection with Dresden's musical life. All the more surprising, therefore,
were my subsequent findings that at least nine of the musicians who were born
or worked in Dresden died in the Holocaust, three others managed to survive
the concentration camps, and two avoided persecution by going into hiding. The
remainder saved their lives by fleeing the country and becoming exiles in
Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Palestine, China, Japan, USA and other countries of
the American continent. Those musicians who did not join the first wave of
exiles created within Dresden's Jewish community - as in other German towns -
the Dresden Union of Jewish Culture (Jüdischer Kulturbund Dresden). The German
press of those days made no mention of its existence.

Many books on the history of music in the National Socialist era have
been written in recent years, dealing variously with composition, production,
performance, and theory. All of these areas are synthesized in this work, as
it focuses on a narrowly defined subject matter. Agata Schindler has made
research on the Jewish music community in Dresden her life’s work. Her
considerable collection of memorabilia provided her with the essence as well
as the illustrative matter for this book, which covers 151 Dresden musicians
comprising the ”Dresden List,” of whom 71 were completely excluded from the
Dresden’s music scene after 1933. Twelve representative biographies
demonstrate the substantial contributions the Jewish community had for
centuries made to the Dresden music scene, both sacred and profane,
underscoring their loss after 1933. The organization of this clearly laid-out
treatise is reminiscent of an exhibition catalog. Schindler’s portrait of Jews
in the musical life of Dresden is of more than narrow local interest; it
serves to remind us of talented creative people who were outcasts purely for
reasons of race.